Want your business to thrive in 2015? Here are 8 crucial tricks for your inbound-marketing

It is getting more and more complicated and hard to get your prospect customers attention, trust and cash. According to Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot and author of the book Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online, the way modern consumers shop and make purchases has changed dramatically, and as such, businesses must adapt in order to survive. You can no longer rent your way to consumer attention, you need to earn it. Instead of dreaming up new ways to interrupt your way into your prospects’ lives, invest in ways to engage them meaningfully with an inbound experience.

www.entrepreneur.com put together 8 absolutely crucial nbound marketing practices that are vital to the growth and success of your business. No matter how busy you are, you simply can’t ignore the importance of marketing your brand effectively. Take a look at the eight most important things every entrepreneur needs to know about inbound marketing.

1. The traditional marketing playbook is broken. Almost everyone – 91 percent, to be precise – has unsubscribed from email lists. Two-out-of-three people (68 percent) who record TV content do so to skip advertisements (Motorola, December 2012) and, according to DoubleClick, the average click-through rate on display ads is only 0.2 percent. “Dharmesh (Shah) and I wrote the inbound marketing book to give entrepreneurs actionable advice to attract, engage and delight their prospects, customers and leads,” Halligan explained. “Inbound marketing focuses on the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet, and entrepreneurs have more remarkable ideas than anyone I know.”

2. Your content must be remarkable enough to break through the clutter. Think about how many channels you have on your television, and how many websites and social media channels compete for your attention each day. The same is true for your customers. It’s not enough to just produce content. Your content must educate, inspire or entertain your audience.

Don’t talk about your brand non-stop or try to sell people too early or often in your content. Instead, try to spark interesting dialogue and discussion with your content. Doing so will pay off with attention and engagement.

3. Think of your website as a hub, not a megaphone. Far too many businesses think about their websites as broadcast channels for addressing a large group of people. Your website functions best when its content and design are built with a human touch. Instead of writing copy to impress your competitors, create copy and experiences an individual customer will love.

4. Inbound includes content and code. Many entrepreneurs mistake massive volumes of content for an inbound strategy, forgetting that shipping code is indispensable as well. Specifically, free tools are powerful in converting web traffic into highly engaged leads.

For example, InsightSquared created Sales Funnel, a free tool that allows Salesforce users to quickly and efficiently diagnose their sales funnel. Leads that try Sales Funnel convert at a rate almost twenty times higher than leads that don’t.